How Chiikawa’s Momonga Card Fits Into Japan’s Shokugan Culture

Chiikawa Collection Card Gummy Series 5: Momonga Thank You Card

A Card Born From Japan’s Candy-Toy Tradition

This item is a trading card from the Chiikawa Collection Card Gummy series, specifically its fifth wave. In Japan, it belongs to a category called shokugan — a contraction of “shokuhin gangu,” meaning food-accompanied toys. The format has its roots in the 1970s and 1980s: a small sweet packaged together with a collectible item, sold in convenience stores, supermarkets, and toy shops nationwide. Trading cards became one of the most enduring shokugan formats, appearing alongside franchises from Pokemon to One Piece over the decades.

Within the Chiikawa Collection Card Gummy Series 5, this particular card carries a Thank You — arigatou — theme. Organizing cards around emotional or seasonal messages is a well-established technique in Japanese trading card sets, used to distinguish individual prints within a larger series and give collectors clear targets to seek out. The card measures approximately 8.5 by 5.5 centimeters, has rounded corners and a gloss finish, and places Momonga against a soft purple background scattered with white sparkles, with an “arigatou” banner along the lower edge.

Chiikawa: From a Twitter Manga to a Cultural Phenomenon

The franchise behind this card is Chiikawa, whose full title translates loosely as “Something Small and Cute.” Creator Nagano launched the comic on Twitter — now X — in 2020 as a short-form strip. The world of Chiikawa follows small, round creatures navigating everyday life and occasional hardships. The contrast between the characters’ visibly soft appearance and the quietly bittersweet moments they experience is central to the series’ appeal, and it distinguishes Chiikawa from more straightforward kawaii properties.

Within a few years, Chiikawa became one of the most commercially active intellectual properties in Japan. An anime adaptation began airing on TV Asahi affiliate stations in 2022, and merchandise — spanning plush toys, stationery, capsule-machine figures, and shokugan lines like this one — expanded rapidly through the mid-2020s. The series is a representative example of a modern SNS-origin IP: built entirely on social media, then scaled into a full licensing ecosystem spanning multiple manufacturers and retail channels.

Momonga: The Flying Squirrel at the Center of This Card

Momonga is a character within the Chiikawa universe whose name comes directly from the Japanese word for a small gliding squirrel — the animal English speakers typically call a flying squirrel. The card depicts the character in a pose consistent with the franchise’s visual language: a compact, white, fluffy body with large ears, softly rosy cheeks, hands pressed together, and a gentle expression.

For collectors outside Japan, this card carries several points of interest. Chiikawa’s kawaii aesthetic travels well internationally — its social-media origins give it a cultural texture familiar to audiences who followed the franchise online before any merchandise reached them. The Momonga character, drawing on a real Japanese animal not widely known in other markets, adds a degree of specificity that sets it apart from more generic character designs. And because shokugan series circulate primarily through domestic Japanese retail channels, sourcing a card from a specific wave and variant — such as this Thank You print from Series 5 — requires import for anyone outside Japan.